Liability
When a teacher or educator is responsible for his/her actions or inactions.
What is liable?
The degree of care a teacher of ordinary prudence would have used. For example, in Gibbons v. Orleans Parish School Board (1980) the school board was found liable for lack of supervision when a child was injured on the playground.
What is reasonable care?
A small awarded amount in which the plaintiff has been wronged but also has not been able to show actual damages to support his/her claim.
What is nominal damages?
The defendant in a negligence case is considered to be this if they win the case.
What is prevailing party?
A knowing violation of a reasonable and enforced rule or policy.
What is willful conduct?
Applied in the 1991 case Eisel v Board of Education of Montgomery County (1991) school counselors failed to notify a father that his teenage daughter had intended to kill herself.
What is duty of care?
This type of damage is awarded when the defendant has shown malicious, gradual, or reckless disregard from the an injured person's safety or constitutional rights.
What is punitive damage?
The embarrassment of shame to a person.
What is personal humiliation?
An event related to an injury that the courts deem to be the cause of that injury.
What is proximate cause?
Protection of a teacher from liability.
What is sovereign immunity?
In Miles v. School District No. 138 of Cheyenne County (1979), Jodeen Miles severed two fingers while working on her senior project in Shop II. She sued her shop teacher for negligent supervision but ultimately, Jodeen was found negligent in failing to use the ordinary care that a student of her age would have used.
What is contributory negligence?
Under this common-law theory, school districts can be held liable to other employees when they are negligent in hiring. For example, a school district would be negligent for hiring someone whom they know or should have known to be unfit for the position.
What is negligent hiring?
In the U.S. Supreme Court case DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services (1989) this term was used to explain that a school district may not be liable for the actions of third parties who deprive individuals of life, liberty, or property.
What is section 1983?
When a school principle left a door unlocked and was then assaulted by an intruder through the unlocked door, a Tennessee court held that the school board was immune from liability. Doe v. Board of Education of Memphis (1990).
What is governmental immunity?
In the case, Rollins v. Concordia Parish School Board (1985), a nine-year-old girl broke her leg jumping off a merry-go-round. The court found that the school board was negligent for lack of supervision, as well as the student being negligent for jumping off the merry-go-round.
What is comparative negligence?
Hunter v. Board of Education of Montgomery County (1982) resulted in this due to school officials furnishing false information of a child's learning disability, and altering school records to cover up their actions.
What is educational malpractice?
This term was used as a result of the case Harlow v Fitzgerald (1982) in which the Supreme Court stated that public officials are, "generally shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate established rights of which a reasonable person would have known."
What is good-faith standard?
The mistaken information of an individual's character.
What is impairment of reputation?
This is the most common award, in which it rewards injured persons for their actual losses, for example, medical expenses.
What is compensatory damage?
In Spears v. Jefferson Parish School Board (1994), a kindergarten student suffered from this after the physical education teacher pretended that the student's two friends were dead. This resulted in the teacher being founded liable for the student's physcological problems that resulted because of this.
What is mental anguish and suffering?